Diesel or Gas truck?

WE are ready to purchase an additional dump truck. Gas prices are ridiculous. I am unfamiliar with diesel engines except for their durability, and gas economy.<br>It is OK to use a diesel for one of the lawn crews? I was toild not to because it is very bad to drive a diesel 15min then shut it off for a half hour, and do that all week.

A diesel is a good investment.You will only<br>have a problem with constant starts and stops<br>if you have a turbo diesel.A good naturally<br>aspirated diesel of around 61/2 to 7 litres<br>is very good.Isuzu,UD and Mitsubishi all<br>make excellent trucks.Your maintenance will<br>be less as a diesel uses compression-ignition<br>rather than spark-ignition,therefore no spark<br>plugs,ect.You do need to keep a close eye on<br>your air filters as a &quot;dusted&quot; motor is<br>pricey to fix.I know of trucks here that <br>do 250-300 start/stops per week and they are fine.(no turbo) I service mine every 200 hours (I fitted hour meters to them both).<br>I would go for one of the abovementioned<br>cabover trucks,as you have much better <br>visibility and manauverability.<br>Hope this helps.<p>Karl<br>

I know a guy around here who has a ford f-350 turbo diesel and he just leaves his running all day. In the morning when he hooks up the trailer, he turns it on, and then shuts it off 10 hours later. He's only at each lawn for 10 minutes. Apparently he gets about the same gas mileage leaving it running all day as he did starting and stoping it before.

Homer, The engine makers put big magic in<br>little box to make da turbo. <p>Grasshopper,You gotta be careful leaving<br>diesels idling all day as you can glaze up<br>the bores.Diesels work best when they are <br>under load.Leave them idling for extended<br>periods will dramatically shorten the life<br>of the motor.<p>Karl<br>

the reason turbo diesels aren't good for short trips is that, you are supposed to let them idle for a couple minutes after a drive, to let the turbo cool down, otherwise you'll go through a lot of turbos (the bearings coke because of the extreme heat and lack of oil circulation). There are two practical ways around this, one is to get a turbo timer, this keeps your engine on for a couple minutes after you remove the key, alowing the turbo to cool down. The option which interests me more is a pre-luber. this is an electric oil pump that pressurizes your oil system before start-up, greatly reducing startup wear. It can also be used to circulate oil after the engine turns off, this cools the the turbo. Another add-on which is interesting, though of little need for me (in virginia) is a diesel fired coolant heater. This heats the coolant in the winter, without a plugin, it also has an electric coolant pump. I wonder if you can wire it to circulate coolant after engine shutdown withou firing the heater. look at it, www.espar.com i think. its expensive, $1500. but i think it could save fuel, cause from reading about it, it uses .04 gallons per hour to heat the engine,

I shut my Dodge/Cummins off when the EGT guage gets down to 300 degrees,which is about 20 seconds to one minute if ive been running it hard.If you let it idle for 30 seconds to a minute before shutting it down you will have no problems with them.If you shutdown hot all the time,the hot turbo could coke the oil and waste the turbo bearings over time.Ive never seen this happen and my friend works on FedEX trucks-all the newe ones are Cummins 5.9 BTA(The same as my Dodge).the drivers shutdown at every delivery,sometimes over 100 times a day,with no cooldown time and he has never seen a motor or turbo failure on any of them.<p>----------<br>John D<br>